José Serrano

Mr. SERRANO

Mr. SERRANO. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Shows).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. One of the comments that we keep hearing from everyone on that side who gets up to put forth a deep cut is, do not worry about this cut, what it is that I am cutting will get done. So we will cut one bill, then people will say, do not worry about it, Defense will be taken care of. Then they will cut another bill and say, do not worry about it, everything in Energy and Water will be taken care of. Now today they are saying, we will cut the census but, do not worry, the census will be taken care of. And I suspect some time in the fall they will cut education and health care and health services to shreds and they will say, do not worry about it, people will be taken care of. This may come as a shock, but sooner or later, if we keep on cutting, something is really not going to happen. Something is not going to go well. And the reason that we are opposing this amendment today is because we know for a fact that the census can run into serious problems if we approve this amendment. Now, I also personally would like to help the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). He told us with such pride and joy, and he should tell us with pride and joy, that just this weekend he delivered two babies. Well, his amendment runs the risk of not counting those babies in the census. I do not want him to go through life delivering babies that will not be counted in the census. Let me just end with this thought, which is the same one I brought up before. I think it is important for everyone to understand that the census was the only issue in this bill on which there was full agreement. Let me repeat that again. The census item was the only part of this bill on which there was full agreement. People like myself, who are voting for final passage of this bill, are doing it not because I support the cuts we made, they are doing it mainly because it funded fully the census. So now to break the only agreement we had by destroying the census means that whatever support there is for this bill we lose, whatever hope there is that we could move ahead to come up with a better bill in general terms we lose, that any possibility we have to get this project on the way we lose. There are things that have to be dealt with right away. When the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) and when the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) get up and tell us the importance of this item and when the gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers) tells us the importance of this item, they are not saying that just to hear themselves speak or to appear on TV. They know how difficult it was to reach this point. How many of my colleagues have forgotten that we held up budgets in the past because of the census issue? So if we are here, we are with an agreement at least on this item, why even consider voting for the Coburn amendment? So, Mr. Chairman, I would hope that everyone in this House joins in a bipartisan basis to defeat this amendment. This is the worst amendment from a gentleman who is famous for his amendments, but this is without a doubt the worst amendment he has brought to the floor. If this should pass, even he would regret it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. On this item that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) was just discussing, we have serious concerns about having congressional input or involvement at this point. As we understand it, this item is in the Office of the Special Counsel which was established by Congress. This issue is being looked at by that office, and without speaking much on this, it just seems to us totally improper at this point to commit in any way to any kind of congressional involvement when the fact is that this is being looked at legally, and testimony has been taken, it is my understanding, from both sides. I think that the proper way and the prudent way to go--I am not a lawyer, but I would assume that the prudent way to go is to wait for the special counsel to come back with a proper ruling that speaks to this issue.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, but I still feel that the gentleman perhaps may be questioning the kind of job that the Special Counsel's office is doing, and that is a totally different item. But I think if we are going to have any kind of order in these issues, we should just wait for them to come back and give us the information necessary, and I hope that the gentleman takes that into consideration when he takes further steps.

Mr. SERRANO

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, today we take up H.R. 2670, the bill making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the Judiciary, and several related agencies. It has been a great personal pleasure for me to work with our chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and with the other members of the subcommittee. Special thanks also to my ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). The gentleman from Kentucky's (Mr. Rogers) many years on this subcommittee have given him tremendous knowledge, both broad and deep, of the wide variety of topics under the subcommittee's jurisdiction. His stewardship of the subcommittee is marked by his fairness and attentiveness to the interests and concerns of Members. I have also benefited greatly from the guidance of the former chairman and ranking Democrat of the subcommittee, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), who has spent so many years on this bill. I know all my colleagues join me and the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) in sending their condolences to Alan and his family on the loss of his father, Robert Mollohan, who served with such distinction in this body. I must also say a word about our very professional and able staff who have worked long and hard, including nights and weekends, to get us to the floor so quickly after the decision on offsets. More on that later. They enabled us to begin putting a bill together. Since we are on first-name basis, I will do it this way. On the majority side they are Jim and Jennifer, Mike and Cordia and Christine, with Kevin and Jason from the office of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers). On our side we have Sally and Pat, who have done just tremendous work on my behalf, and of course all of my personal staff under the leadership of Lucy Hand. As my colleagues know, Mr. Chairman, this year I was catapulted from not on the subcommittee at all to ranking Democrat. Learning this large and challenging bill practically from scratch has made this an interesting and educational year for me. As the chairman has explained, the bill includes budget authority of about $35.7 billion. This is certainly much better than our initial 302(b) allocation, but it is still about $3 billion short, below the budget request. The manner in which the chairman allocated funds among the major accounts was for the most part fair and evenhanded, and I applaud his efforts to minimize staff cuts and facility closings. But the bill still has problems. The biggest problem is simply the inadequacy of the subcommittee's allocation. This bill underfunds important programs. It does not fund important Member and administration initiatives, and still has to use gimmicks to stay under the allocation. It is ironic that House and Senate Republicans pointed to forecasts of huge on-budget surpluses to justify passing their bills to make massive backloaded tax cuts; but forecasts of future economic activities are unreliable at best, and, more important, the surpluses mostly depend on Congress sticking with the deepening appropriations cuts enacted in the Balanced Budget Act, which, incidentally, I did not support. The gimmicks used to make this bill look as if it is under the FY2000 cap show how unlikely it is that these spending cuts will materialize over the next decade. The main gimmick, of course, is the emergency designation for the census. This provision, imposed on the committee by the Republican leadership, is a misuse of the emergency designation; we have known that a census would be required in 2000 for about 200 years. It also means spending the Social Security surplus. On more specific provisions, the bill provides the Census Bureau with the resources it needs to do the 2000 census and the necessary quality checks on it. This is a tremendous accomplishment, and I am very proud of the work that both sides of the aisle did on this. While I am pleased that the bill includes funding for the U.N. arrears, I am very concerned that the bill underfunds our U.N. accounts. This may cost us our vote in the General Assembly and, with it, any leverage we might hope to exercise over management and budget reforms at the U.N. The bill is $95 million short of the request for arrears, creates new arrears by cutting funding for peacekeeping, and conditions $100 million of our payments on a time-consuming certification process. But if we do not pay the U.N. $352 million by December 31, our General Assembly vote will automatically, and we mean automatically, be lost. The most troubling shortfall and the major exception to the relatively evenhanded treatment of other agencies is the real cut to SBA salaries and expenses, which would have a drastic impact on the agency. If enacted, the SBA estimates it would require a reduction in force of 2,400 employees or 75 percent of SBA's work force. Apart from effectively closing down activities vital to our Nation's small businesses, it would also hamper SBA's ability to monitor a loan portfolio totaling $45 billion. By the end of this process, this devastating cut must be restored. The Legal Services Corporation, too, was grossly underfunded in what has become an annual ritual. The bill provides only $141 million, less than half of last year's level, and 200 million below the President's request. Each year for the last 3 or 4 years this level has been proposed, and each year there has been an amendment raising the level to $250 million or so. And so it will be again this year. Other important examples of underfunding includes the COPS program, over $1 billion under the request; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, frozen at $33 million below the request; the Civil Rights Commission, also frozen at $2 million below the request; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, half a billion under the request; and the State Department, half a billion under the request. Unfunded initiatives include the 21st century policing initiative or COPS II, the anti-drug initiative on the State or local law enforcement, efforts to combat terrorism and cybercrime, the advanced technology program, the new markets initiative, the Lands Legacy initiative, the tobacco lawsuit, and the Pacific Salmon Recovery initiative. Mr. Chairman, in closing I think the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) has generally done a good job distributing funds within a much too small allocation. The meager size of the bill and the programs and initiatives that cannot be fully funded within the total remain problems, and the administration has raised serious concerns with the bill, many of which I have mentioned, and has suggested that it would be vetoed in its present form. However, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with my chairman to address these problems. I am hopeful that by the time we bring a conference report to the floor we will have more money to work with so that we can restore much-needed resources to the important programs in this bill and to accommodate requests for important initiatives. Let me say, so that I am clear, that this is so important to me that I am giving my vote to this bill in support of the chairman's desire to make this a better bill. I cannot account for the rest of my Members who may feel that this bill, as it stands, will not get any better, and we will see quite a large number of Members voting against it. I personally will vote for it in the hope that we can achieve our objectives. If we cannot achieve the improvements that I hope for, I will oppose the conference report. If the President vetoes the bill, I will vote to sustain his veto. But for now I choose to move the process along, and I will support H.R. 2670. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the distinguished ranking member of the committee.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 additional seconds to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu). (Mr. WU asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. SERRANO. I thank the gentleman for his concern. Mr. Chairman, we have worked together on this issue. This is a very serious issue, to the point where the gentleman and I gave ourselves up for arrest during demonstrations that took place in New York. We did not do that lightly. We took that very seriously at this stage in our development as human beings, and at this stage in our careers. I give the gentleman my word that on the way to passage and signature of this bill, to approval by the President, I will do whatever I have to do to see that we make changes in the language that will fit the gentleman's request and our desire.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), my friend, colleague, and neighbor.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted once again to thank the gentleman, my chairman, for his work, and for the way he has treated me in these dealings. I have made it clear to the chairman that this is a very difficult bill; one, however, that I personally support, and I will try in my support of this bill to send the chairman and the majority a message that I stand ready, willing, and able to work with them to make this bill a better bill. However, I have to state that with the problems that this bill has, it still does have a very positive statement about the Census, one that I support, one that I know is necessary, and one that I thank the chairman for. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would increase the appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation to $250 million. Of this increase, $108 million would be for the LSC's basic field programs and required independent audits and $900,000 would bring the Office of Inspector General up to the fiscal year 1999 level to assist in improving case reporting. To offset the increase and assure that the amendment is outlay- neutral, it would cut $23 million from administration of the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Fund, $20 million from the FBI's National Instant Check System, $32 million from the salaries and expenses of the Bureau of Prisons, $24 million from the salaries and expenses of the Federal Judiciary, and $10 million from the salaries and expenses of the Department of State, and transfers $44 million within the Immigration and Naturalization Service. These are not easy cuts to make. But each can be justified. The cut of 53 percent contained in the bill would virtually abandon our long- standing Federal commitment to the legal protection of low-income Americans, including children, the elderly, and the victims of spousal and child abuse, arbitrary government action, and consumer fraud. A reduction of the fiscal year 2000 funding level to $141 million would result in severe reductions in services to most clients. The number of cases closed would fall, and families would actually be turned away and denied access to the court. There would be a decrease in the number of neighborhood offices resulting in no offices providing legal assistance to clients in thousands of counties throughout the United States. Especially hard hit would be the millions of poor people living in rural areas in the South, Southwest, and large parts of the Midwest. The number of Legal Services Corporation attorneys serving the poor would be drastically reduced with just one LSC lawyer for every 23,600 poor Americans in the year 2000. The Legal Services Corporation, Mr. Chairman, was created in 1974 with bipartisan sponsorship and signed into law by President Nixon. The Legal Services Delivery System is based on several principles: local priorities, national accountability, competition for grants, and a strong public-private partnership. This corporation has been a success with real programs to help low- income women who are the victims of domestic violence. LSC-funded programs have helped millions of children living in poverty by providing lawyers who represent children and their parents in civil cases, helping them to avoid homelessness, to obtain child support or supplemental security income, and to find a safe haven against violence in the home. Significant services are provided to the elderly who, because of their special health, income, and social needs, often require legal assistance. Mr. Chairman, the Legal Services Corporation provides a valuable, even essential, service to the Nation's low-income families that would be reduced by the funding level in this bill. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to give LSC more resources to meet the legal needs of the poor. This is without a doubt the most important amendment of the day and one that I know can have bipartisan support on behalf of people who need it and on behalf of those principles we stand for in this country.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, we know of at least about a dozen who want to speak now, and all the courtesy should be given to them. So it is a problem at this point.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I understand the gentleman's request, and we all want to finish as quickly as we can, but there are just on this side too many speakers.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I have spoken to the chairman, and we do not object.

Mr. SERRANO

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, let me first explain what I will be doing here today. I will be voting for this bill, because I believe it is the proper position for me to take to move this process along in the hope we can get a better bill and because it fully funds the census, which is important not only for my district, but for every district throughout this country. However, I rise today in opposition to the rule. At first glance this is a fine rule. It is an open rule providing for procedures that would help the House consider the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill in a fine manner. If the Committee on Rules had simply granted the Committee on Appropriations' requested rule, this debate would be over with a voice vote. However, Mr. Speaker, Committee on Rules Republicans once again chose to stiff the Democrats on amendments. They made in order and protected from points of order three Republican amendments by the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass), the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt), and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal). But of at least seven Democratic amendments requested at the Committee on Rules hearing, not one was made in order. I asked the committee to make in order an amendment based on my bill, H.R. 1644, the Cuban Food and Medicine Security Act of 1999, which would permit sales of U.S. food and agricultural products, including seeds and medicine and medical equipment to Cuba, without the cumbersome licensing procedures now in effect. I argued that the time has come for the United States, on moral grounds, to relieve the suffering of the Cuban people and that American business, agriculture in particular, could benefit greatly from entering the Cuban market. USDA lists more than 25 agricultural products that Cuba imports, and farm advocates say that the U.S. could reasonably expect to provide 70 percent of Cuba's agriculture imports, earning in excess of $1 billion a year, and $3 billion by the second year. The committee did not see fit to make my amendment in order. Now, my amendment might be controversial in some quarters. Indeed, one Member of the Committee on Rules was heard to say ``baloney,'' which is not on the chart, as I was discussing it. But the committee did not even protect the bipartisan amendment to name the main Justice Building after former Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The amendment based on legislation introduced by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough), was requested by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Quinn), and the very eloquent gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis). Even Mr. Lewis' eloquence did not move the Committee on Rules to let the House consider the amendment. In short, Mr. Speaker, the needless partisanship of the Republicans on the Committee on Rules has turned a good rule as requested by my chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), into a slap in my caucus's face, and I urge my colleagues to vote against the rule.